Housing News Digest
Housing News Digest
The Tenants' Union Housing News Digest compiles our pick of items from all the latest tenancy and housing media, sent once per week, on Thursdays.
Below is the Digest archive from November 2020 onwards. From time to time you will find additional items in the archive that did not make it into the weekly Digest email. Earlier archives are here, where you can also find additional digests by other organisations.
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Archive
Fierce competition for Adelaide rental homes amid tight market, prompting calls for rental price caps
Stacey Pestrin ABC (No paywall)Hayden Patterson says he applied for more than 400 rentals before finally landing a place in a share house in Adelaide's inner-south – then his rent increased.
He said last year, before the price rise, he was already spending 80 per cent of his income on rent.
"Whereas just five years ago when I was in social housing, it was capped at 25 per cent," he said.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-17/price-hikes-and-tough-com…
# Hot topic Australia, Housing affordability, Housing market, Personal stories.How would rent caps work in Australia and how might they affect affordability?
Cait Kelly The Guardian (No paywall)Advocates call for price controls to provide cost-of-living relief, while investors argue they will cause a drop in supply.
The Queensland premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, has spent this week riding a tide of investor backlash after saying her government was “very seriously” considering introducing rental caps.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/mar/22/how-would…
# Hot topic, TUNSW in the media Australia, Rent, Housing market, State Government.Opinion: 'Good cause' is good policy
David R. Jones City & State NY (No paywall)My family has lived in New York for a long time. We have been renters, we have been homeowners, and we have been small landlords. Housing was never simple or easy in New York, but with homelessness and displacement on the rise, the situation today is uniquely dire.
Every day we see another story about evictions in New York City and New York state. A lot of the time they have to do with non-payment – rents are too high and wages are too low. But we also regularly see cases of no fault evictions: cases where the tenant has held up their side of the bargain, but the landlord wants them out. The 1.6 million families who don’t live in rent stabilized, subsidized or public housing have little legal recourse. If the landlord wants them out – whether because they want to charge another tenant an exorbitant amount, or because the tenant is organizing around building conditions, or because they’re discriminating against them – they can simply evict them without cause.
https://www.cityandstateny.com/opinion/2023/03/opinion-good-caus…
# Must read, Hot topic International, Eviction, Rent, Campaigns and law reform, Landlords and agents, No-grounds evictions.Black people in England and Wales three times as likely to live in social housing
Aamna Mohdin and Carmen Aguilar García The Guardian (No paywall)Black people in England and Wales are almost three times as likely as their white counterparts to live in social housing, new census data shows, while people of mixed race backgrounds are 1.6 times more likely.
The data showed that life outcomes varied considerably between ethnic groups in education and employment, health, disability, home ownership and overcrowding.
While 16% of white British people lived in social housing, 44% of black Britons, including Africans and Caribbeans, said they did so on the 2021 census, with 27% of people of mixed race backgrounds living in social housing.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/mar/15/census-black-bri…
# Research alert International, Public and community housing, Homelessness, Race and ethnicity, Strong communities.Skyrocketing rents, job-style interviews and ‘dangerous’ housing: inside the capital’s renting hell
Emma Magnus Evening Standard (No paywall)Last month, Mayor of London Sadiq Khan repeated demands for the Government to freeze private rents and ban evictions, arguing that renters are facing a “triple whammy, with rising rents, bills and the cost of household essentials”. There is a reason that Khan — and others — have made these calls so many times. Renters in the capital are in trouble.
“The cost of London rentals has risen by an average of 16 per cent in the past year — more than anywhere else in the country, says Zoopla, while the London Renters Union found that increases of 30 to 50 per cent are increasingly common, with most renters struggling to pay.
https://www.standard.co.uk/insider/london-renting-nightmare-desp…
# Hot topic International, Eviction, Rent, Housing affordability, Housing market.Majority of homeless people in Wigan kicked out by landlords in 'no fault evictions'
George Lythgoe Manchester Evening News (No paywall)Landlords kicking people out of homes is the cause for 65 per cent of homeless cases in Wigan, a meeting heard.
The Health and Social Care Scrutiny Committee was told that 1,091 homelessness applications were submitted to Wigan Council in recent months - an increase of 339 compared to the same time last year. This was described as “devastating” by Coun Danny Fletcher who highlighted is as the “biggest amount we’ve had in a long time”.
Coun Fletcher told Wigan Town Hall that many in his ward of Ashton had fallen victim to Section 21 eviction notices - which do not require fault for landlords to kick people out.
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-…
# International, Eviction, Campaigns and law reform, Landlords and agents, No-grounds evictions.Tourism: clear rules and data sharing are the only way to ensure a fair short-term rental market in Europe
Matteo Miglietta European Committee of the Regions (No paywall)Increased transparency and free access to critical information on short-term rentals in order to fight illegal activities and ensure the availability of affordable housing for local communities: these are the main requests that European cities and regions addressed to the EU institutions through an opinion drafted by Roberto Ciambetti, President of the Veneto Regional Council, adopted by unanimity on 15 March at the plenary of the European Committee of the Regions (CoR).
https://cor.europa.eu/en/news/Pages/clear-rules-data-sharing-fai…
# International, Housing affordability, Landlords and agents, Short-term holiday letting.What If We Made It Easier for Renters to Buy Their Buildings?
Wilfred Chan Curbed (No paywall)Viola Straker and her neighbors in her 31-unit Crown Heights building have a proposal to end the yearslong standoff over who owns 1074 Eastern Parkway: Sell the building to them. “Tenants would be better off purchasing instead of selling it to another slumlord,” she says.
The idea might sound outlandish: Straker lives on Social Security, giving her just enough to pay her stabilized monthly rent of $817, to say nothing of trying to purchase a multifamily building valued at over $1.3 million. After her landlord died in 2017 and previous agreements with another company to manage the building fell through, it also needs expensive repairs, with leaks, mold, pests everywhere, and a collapsing roof. But what if tenants didn’t have to be rich to buy their building?
https://www.curbed.com/2023/03/tenants-opportunity-purchase-act-…
# International, Affordable housing, Campaigns and law reform, Co-operatives and resident-led housing, Housing market, Planning and development, Strong communities.